


friends don't take you home

by herzen



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 11:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17642198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herzen/pseuds/herzen
Summary: Soonyoung is allergic to alcohol.Or so he says until he accidentally drinks an entire glass of soju and does not immediately die.





	friends don't take you home

Soonyoung is allergic to alcohol. 

Or so he says until he accidentally drinks an entire glass of soju and does not immediately die. The silence of death descends upon the room immediately. Soonyoung grows red, and then redder, but it's the tender shade of a flush, not an allergy symptom.

Broken down into facts it happened because Jihoon was trying to swap Wonwoo's water with alcohol after a good half-an-hour taunt of  _ Bet you can't do it without him noticing _ from a very inebriated Seungcheol beside him. Wonwoo, not noticing, had grabbed the glass in panic. Beside him Soonyoung was already crying at how spicy the ramen was. Jihoon’s triumphant smile had a 1-sec lifespan: he’d grinned, and then almost immediately winced, watching as Wonwoo shoved the glass not to his own mouth, but to Soonyoung’s.

"Um," Jihoon asks tentatively, placing a hand on Soonyoung's shoulder as he starts listing to the side, a boat precariously on the edge of sinking. "You okay?"

Soonyoung turns his head slowly at the question. Eyes unfocused, he squints, unseeing. Wonwoo says, "uh oh" and pulls Soonyoung out of the restaurant. Five minutes later and they don’t come back.

"Thought he was dying, ha ha," Wonwoo will say later. 

"That wasn't an allergic reaction, Wonwoo," Jihoon argues. "That wasn't even close to how Hansol reacted to peanut butter candy."

"What? Candy?" Rustling, like paper crumpling. And then once more, Wonwoo's voice, as fake as his faux-static: "Can't hear you, Jihoon. Reception--sucks--candy, give--" and then he's gone.

So as a revision: Soonyoung doesn't drink.

Ask him why and he'd go into an elaborate spiel about not wanting to follow the metaphorical footsteps of his alcoholic father so well-rehearsed you wouldn't know he's lying as he says, "A childhood so riddled with drunken outbursts," with the back of his hand pressed against his forehead, eyes up towards the sun. It takes a while, but you realise: Soonyoung's father is an actual angel. A tub of homemade kimchi still resides in your dorm fridge, made lovingly and the most delicious, given by Soonyoung's father himself that one time he visited and distributed kimchi to the whole floor.

Except by the time you realise, Soonyoung's already slid away, so you're left feeling bad for even thinking ill of his father, mood so down you actually finish the kimchi that dinner and absolutely do not cry over it even if your roommate's saved a video of your pathetic sobbing for future blackmail.

Unsurprisingly, it does not work on Seungcheol, who simply says, "It's not exactly convincing when you have Wonwoo reciting the lines beside me, Soonyoung."

Behind Seungcheol Wonwoo mouths, "Sorry!" and Soonyoung blinks twice as if to say, Abort Mission? and then, blinking some more, which Wonwoo manages to decipher, Run Now While Seungcheol-hyung Is Distracted. 

Wonwoo used to say, during the nights they practiced the meticulously produced storyline, "More emotions, Soonyoung. You look like you're reading a script."

Soonyoung deliberately looked up from his script. "I  _am_ reading a script."

"That's not what I meant."

But Soonyoung could never sustain a lie, which meant the plan was headed for failure the minute Wonwoo thought of it anyway. 

This meant instead he says, "I don't drink without Wonwoo," which isn't exactly a lie, but still proved to be enigmatic enough that people still probed further, asking for more details. It was ridiculous, why everyone was so curious. Was it weird that Soonyoung never drinks?

"Not really," Jihoon says, eyeing them both suspiciously. "What's weird is why he deemed it necessary to have you as an exception to the rule."

"Because I'm his best friend," Wonwoo says, a deadpanned truth, and Jihoon snorts that disbelief snort, more offensive than anything he'd ever said about Wonwoo's messy codes throughout the entire term combined.

In the end they manage to  learn the truth anyway, give or take a few measly weeks of intense scrutiny and poorly veiled attempts at getting Soonyoung drunk (mostly by Jeonghan, ever the most reliable). 

Soonyoung doesn't drink _usually_ and without Wonwoo to boot, but the rare times he does, it's almost always in their shared room, private to probing eyes. During the times he's migrated his bed to the library's couch carrying only a large hoodie he drowns himself in, he goes back to their room with can or two for Wonwoo, and an entire bottle for himself. Midterms are always the hardest. During midterms you are, at every opportunity, always reminded by a professor about the impending deadlines of the projects of at least 4 of your courses. Wonwoo sleeps and his dreams are coded in Arduino language, LEDs flashing the word HELP behind his eyelids, lucid enough that when he wakes up he sometimes looks at Soonyoung's prone form on his own desk and think, first, That's such an uncomfortable position, and want nothing but to pull him awake gently and tuck him in bed, cover his cold toes and reassure him through his feverish mumbles of needing to do 10 more lab reports that the day has 12 more hours, there's no harm in sleeping through half of it to regain strength and maybe avoid death. 

Other times he just continues staring, mind blank, a ghost of a pair of lips cold on his cheek.

It really just so happens that Jihoon's come to help Wonwoo with his code. It really just so happens that when he does arrive Soonyoung's already halfway through his bottle of soju, soldiering through his drunken reverie of lab report-writing, a half-finished prototype flashing red and green LEDs over and over by his seat. Jihoon looks at it, then at Soonyoung, then at Wonwoo, and asks, "I thought he didn't drink?"

Too busy with his own code, eyes burning with  the exhaustion of staring at the error message for already 3 hours and counting and still not knowing where he'd fucked up in his 500 line code, Wonwoo does not bother address the question, instead lets it wash through him in distorted sound, white noise against the gears moving in his brain. 

Soonyoung finishes his bottle. Jihoon fixes his code in 30 minutes. Wonwoo stands up in triumph, blood thrumming in joy and something else, feeling all kinds of gratitude even as Jihoon shoots him with the most shit-eating grin any other time he'd gag over, and immediately Soonyoung follows suit, red in the face, stand unsteady, and then--

"It's a problem," Soonyoung will say later, grimacing, pink in the cheeks as he refuses to look at neither Jihoon nor Seungcheol. 

"It's a serious problem," Wonwoo says solemnly, patting Soonyoung's shoulder with a sympathetic hand. 

"It's weird," Jihoon says, but it's not mean, because it kinda really is. Definitely kinder than what Soonyoung's ex said, anyway. Now,  _that_ was mean.

"Promise not to tell?" Soonyoung asks, hopeful, and Seungcheol blanches, eyes wide, and says, "oops?" because as soon as he's heard the details from Jihoon, he'd immediately texted,  _ soonyoungs a km _ and sent it to at least 9 other people.

"The fuck is a Kei-Em," Jeonghan says into the receiver, who calls immediately after Seungcheol’s pressed sent. And then, upon realising, “ _ Holy shit _ , really?”

"I want to see it happen," Jeonghan says the moment he finds them, later that week, already in his hand an unopened bottle ready to offer Soonyoung. Soonyoung himself is nowhere to be seen, swallowed up by the crowd, nursing his own cup of orange juice, something he and Wonwoo had to make themselves the first few minutes they’ve arrived. 

"I don’t know what you’re talking about, hyung" Wonwoo says, already warm in the face, his own cup half-empty. He says  _ hyung _ as  _ hyunggggg. _

"Oh, you do, Wonwoo-ya." Jeonghan grins.

"I do?"

It's autopilot by now, programmed into his brain so meticulously he doesn't even veer off course from the flow of the code, has looped it multiple times already in the 10-plus years of his life: the way he automatically tugs at Soonyoung's wrist when Soonyoung starts showing the signs, his bright eyes disappearing into gleeful slits, red high in his cheeks and the tips of his ears, already smacking his lips together.

" _Soonyoung_ ," he slurs, voice like a shot in a vacuum, and for a moment Soonyoung's eyes clear when he turns to see him, the way the world suddenly clears once relief flows through your bloodstream, loosening the tension in your nape, all worries evaporating, and then it comes: Soonyoung's leaning forward, a lone destination in mind.

Something flashes, and then a subsequent click of a phone camera breaks the silence of the room.

"I'm making this my new wallpaper," Junhui says, the only distinguishable noise against everybody else's unruly laughter and yells. 

"It's a serious problem!" Soonyoung whines the next day, as Junhui refuses to airdrop the picture to a begging Mingyu. Three more months and it's become Junhui's prized collection, titled aptly and arranged in chronological order. He has one picture named ITS A PROBLEM, a shot of Soonyoung's blurry cheek, a laughing Jihoon behind his ear, half his face swallowed by the shadows. Junhui accidentally took it only after Soonyoung's unlatched himself from Wonwoo's neck, and yelled into the screen.

"My problem is you taking pictures every time it happened," Soonyoung grumbles half-heartedly, but it’s not like he’s not the first to peek at the pictures once he’s sober enough to realise what had just transpired the night before. 

But at least they're all cool with it. The most they managed was  _ It's weird _ , which, coming from Jihoon, is a statement of facts and nothing else. The worst they had to take was a spat out, laced with disgust, "Fucking _weirdos_." She said weirdos the same way you looked at the blob of shit you stepped on, before you dunked your shoe in the nearest bin you could find. It wasn't her fault, but it wasn't like Soonyoung went around fucking his best friend behind her back. Still, it hurt. Less than a week later Wonwoo had opened the door to a Soonyoung who made himself look smaller than he really was, shoulders bunched up, nose pink. His eyes were red on the edges, his sniffles unmistakably loud with reason. Wonwoo picked up a beer from his fridge and returned to Soonyoung curled up in his couch, crying at his TV. 

"It's sad," Soonyoung reasoned, eyes on the screen. It was a dance number. Nobody was dying. Whatever it was that made him sad, it obviously wasn’t Park Jinyoung attempting to TT. 

Wonwoo gave him the can. Soonyoung looked at it, cringed, and shook his head wildly enough that his fringe covered his eyes. Still the tears flowed, as clear as day. This was the start of Soonyoung's year of sobriety. Wonwoo didn't ask, because he knew, but during the nights Soonyoung felt safe enough to talk he’d said in a small voice, She thought I was cheating on her, which I wasn't, really--and was it weird? Really, Wonwoo. Did you think it was weird? 

Didn't take her for a homophobic, Wonwoo snorted, and then, No, it wasn't weird. 

But shouldn’t it be?--his immediate thought, buried in the corners of his mind as soon as it’d manifested.

Fast forward another two years and it's normal as can be, a lone picture saved for during the nights it happens. Everybody's lost interest, given a few months. Sometimes someone asked, "Why Wonwoo?" and depending on Soonyoung’s mood and ability to form coherent words he’d usually say, “Shrow vhat?” The clearest he can manage, apparently, because any other time he’d close off and pretend he suddenly has selective hearing. It happened enough times that even Jeonghan’s stopped asking, having given up. 

"Why Wonwoo?" Jihoon asked, and because Soonyoung didn't hear, Wonwoo answered for him. 

"I don't know, really." 

"No," Jihoon said, pinning Wonwoo with narrowed eyes, "I meant. _Why_ , Wonwoo?"

Because he was there, when he’d heard her, had seen the look on Soonyoung’s face as they listened to her outrageous claims. Because he was there, afterwards, walking home to their shared room in the cold night, and felt the oppressing silence from Soonyoung crush his entire being. Because he was there when they’d arrived home, unable to sleep, listening to the faintest sounds Soonyoung had made as he made his tears quiet, his curled up form visible as the moon outside lanced the room saddeningly bright. 

Because he was there, that first time, when Soonyoung smuggled two cans of beer during the summer before their senior year, and they’d camped on Wonwoo’s floor and had the dumbest race of downing the entire thing. Soonyoung won, but only by virtue of having half of it spill all over his shirt. Wonwoo laid heaving on the floor, waiting for his eyes to refocus, his heartrate to slow. It felt as if the earth reoriented itself, everything off balance. Soonyoung shirtless beside him, pink all the way to his chest. When his eyes stopped rolling back to his head he managed to focus on Soonyoung’s face first, suddenly way too near to lack intent. Shock made him still, accompanied by the cold hand Soonyoung had pressed to his cheek. Woah, Wonwoo thought, or said, or yelled, or whatever. A tiny piece inside of him shriveled up and died, the lone denial, the warrior of his well-grasped reasoning. He didn’t know something like it even existed, until then, or that Soonyoung’s presence up-close would make him feel as shackled as it did, that first night, and the subsequent times it happened. 

It died and Wonwoo let it, resigned himself to the touch of Soonyoung's hand, the brief, lingering connection.

In a few years they graduate. In a few months they get stable jobs, see each other less often. Wonwoo buys groceries and always gets twice as much as he needs. In the mornings when he wakes up still half-dead, he blinks across his room and wonders why it's empty, devoid of a desk and the person practically living in it.

The reunion is a few years later, during Seungcheol's birthday. Wonwoo hasn't drunk that much in years--in minutes he’s slurring, in 4 hours he's leaning against Soonyoung's frame outside the bar, an arm clutched around his shoulders. Take him home, _please_ , he hears Seungcheol say. The universe trembles as Soonyoung nods back. The hand against his side is warm, but not unwelcome. In the cab Wonwoo gives himself a concussion trying to sleep with his head against the window. Soonyoung steers him away and down, onto his lap. He falls asleep in a second, but not before he feels a hand go through his fringe, fingers against his scalp.

Soonyoung lives nearer so he brings Wonwoo there, piggybacks him throughout the elevator ride as Wonwoo stares down people who dared stared back. Shamelessness comes with inebriation, apparently. He only gets a good look at Soonyoung in the hallway, while Soonyoung sets him down to fish for his keys inside his pockets. Hair mussed up, cheeks a light pink, but ultimately more sober than Wonwoo himself feels, which is kinda sad, he thinks. Kinda really sad. 

He walks to the bedroom on his own. It's unchartered territory, Soonyoung's place; Wonwoo opens 3 wrong doors and 2 cupboards before finding a bed and immediately flopping onto it. The smell is overbearingly Soonyoung, like he's imprinted his skin on it, or something.

Soonyoung stumbles into the room after him, dives headfirst into the bed like you'd do to the sea. He rolls over and stares at the ceiling, and it's an opening as clear as Soonyoung has always been unreadable, so Wonwoo takes it, lets go of his wound up restraint, lets years of letting it happen fall away to him finally leaning into it first, and finally kisses him.

What his lips touch instead: Soonyoung's open palm. 

"You're drunk," Soonyoung tells him, subduedly amused, and because Wonwoo knows a rejection when he sees one he rolls over back to his own safe distance, and tries not to think much of it.

Soonyoung probably sees something. "I'm sorry."

For? Wonwoo thinks, but replies, "S'okay," which should be the end of it, because the earlier he convinces himself what a mistake everything is, the better. In the morning he can wake up and chalk up the night as a thing his age shouldn't allow, much less think too much of, and he can go home and go back to his normal life. Probably meet a girl at work in a few years, settle down, and marry. In a few years the itch to ask Soonyoung why he did the things he did should die, given less attention than what he's always given it when he's alone in his apartment, gut warm with a lone bottle and cheeks cold, the side of his neck missing the imprint of an accompanying hand. He wakes up and there's no embarrassing picture to convince Junhui to delete, and that should be okay, that should feel okay, and yet.

“You’re drunk, Wonwoo-ya,” Soonyoung repeats. “Sleep.” 

Like a spell, it works, and within minutes Wonwoo blacks out, and then wakes up the next morning, and then unfortunately remembers everything that’s happened the night before  as clearly as he’s desperately tried forgetting them. 

“Fuck,” he says, before the lump beside him moves, the blankets reshuffle, and Soonyoung’s face appears.

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Fuck,” Wonwoo repeats, while his soul tries escaping his body. “You surprised me. How long have you been awake?”

Soonyoung thinks about it for a while. “Was thinking about some stuff. Couldn’t sleep.” 

Wonwoo’s roomed with Soonyoung enough years to know what he looked like without sleep, but when Soonyoung turns to face him he’s suddenly a stranger. Wonwoo can’t see the signs at all.

“Got a question for ya,” Soonyoung says.

“Okay, shoot.” Wonwoo says, cold all over. Already he’s praying to whatever god who’s awake enough to listen for Soonyoung to ask about everything else but last night. “I have the choice to not answer, right?”

“Nope,” Soonyoung says. "You know the first thing that comes to my mind every time I realised I’d accidentally kissed you again?" 

Wonwoo's mouth is faster, so it gets out "oops, I did it again?" before his mind blanks, and then restarts. 

"Wrong," Soonyoung says. "It's, 'Wonwoo doesn't deserve this.’"

Soonyoung saw, then. Soonyoung's always seen, whatever Wonwoo tried hiding. That, or Wonwoo’s just one hell of a shitty liar. The realisation hits Wonwoo like a well aimed punch to the gut, the kind that makes sure he doesn’t move for a long while. That kind of numbing revelation, leaves your body curled up on the floor, ears ringing. Suddenly it's like Wonwoo's naked under Soonyoung's probing eyes, exposed in only the marks of how deep his feelings go. 

Before Wonwoo can say anything, Soonyoung continues, "You know the second thing that comes to mind after that?"

He doesn't even wait for a response this time. Soonyoung slowly raises his eyes to meet his, to say, “That I’d like to do it again. And again.” With a sad smile he shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “But I wasn’t sure if you’d let me.”

It’s an eternity before he realises Soonyoung’s waiting for a reply. Going unsure by the second, Soonyoung’s started burrowing under the covers, little by little hiding himself. Wonwoo watches as the tips of his ears go pink, his expression shaky.

“Um,” Wonwoo starts, once his pulse’s started back up. “Those are two questions, though? Thought you said you only had one?”

“ _ I didn’t, _ ” Soonyoung grits out, and Wonwoo laughs, dispels the weight in his chest, and looks back to see Soonyoung’s as relieved as he feels, as weightless. The grin he wears is wide, undisturbed, fucking relieved. 

“I would,” Wonwoo says finally, as an answer, quiet enough that Soonyoung’s only heard because he’s already moved in his space, caging Wonwoo in. As if his letting it happen years back wasn’t as clear as an answer enough. Throat strangely way too tight, he reassures him, “ _Fuck_ , Soonyoung. Of course I would.”

Junhui will send them a zip file in the future, a few months later. It gets deleted and recovered for a few hundred times before finally Wonwoo relents and recovers the thing from the bin one last time and unzips it, watch the folder open up to at least a hundred pictures of variations of Soonyoung planting a wet kiss on any available space on Wonwoo's face (it comes as a surprise to see more on his teeth as he grins into it), and Wonwoo letting it happen, equally as enthused, pliant in Soonyoung's hands against his cheeks. 

Nowadays Soonyoung doesn't even need to be inebriated to do it. He'd just pull at Wonwoo's arm and Wonwoo would lean into it, like he's always done in the past, without worrying over it never happening again, with the reassurance that it always will.

**Author's Note:**

> km = kissing monster kk
> 
> this was dumb and has lived unfinished through my last year of uni and the subsequent 6-mo review. unbelievable, i know. also sry for the ever predictable ending i never seem to veer far from ...whatever this is
> 
> xoxo thx for reading!!!!


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